by J. Thorn
Jaraca let go. She took a couple of steps back, keeping her eyes on Bronwyn.
“Order your soldiers to summon the others,” Jaraca said. “We have business, and little time to get to it.”
A drop of blood dripped from Bronwyn’s throat where Jaraca’s nails had cut her. She wiped it up with her finger, then sucked it off the tip, never taking her eyes from Jaraca’s. The South American Master didn’t seem interested, but Bronwyn knew how to play… and that sometimes it took more than a single match to win the game.
“Whatever you say,” Bronwyn said, smiling as the wound on her throat closed.
Her lieutenant, a slave named Joris, stood nearby. She signaled for him to contact Ambrose and Jing. Bronwyn then sauntered to a long, black leather couch and sat down. She patted the seat next to her, eyes still locked on Jaraca’s.
“Make yourself comfortable. It’ll be a while before the boys arrive.”
Jaraca stared a hole through Bronwyn before turning and heading back toward her boat.
Bronwyn only grinned as she watched the sway of Jaraca’s hips.
9
Florence, Mississippi was nothing more than a speck on a map, but it was bigger than any town Dax had passed through since Hattiesburg. That’s why it surprised him that he had found it empty.
He’d left the duplex early that morning and begun scavenging nearby establishments for food and water, and picked through several gas stations, restaurants, and food markets. But he’d come across nothing worth taking.
And there wasn’t a soul to be found in Florence.
Where did everyone go?
Since he’d parted ways with the old man, Calvin, he hadn’t seen anyone. But he also hadn’t encountered Screamers. Even in this new world of orange-eyed monsters and apocalyptic events, the absence of humans seemed strange.
So Dax continued a couple of miles down the highway to the next town of Richland. Florence and Richland had much in common, too, although Richland had several more chain establishments and recognizable businesses; otherwise, Dax wouldn’t have known he was in another town if it hadn’t been for the sign telling him so.
The farther he went into town, though, the more his stomach protested. The fast food restaurants, bars, and juke joints turned up nothing of value, nothing edible. And not only was his hunger slowing him down, but the searches were costing him time. The day had drifted into late afternoon, and he would soon need to find shelter again. He’d hoped to make it to Jackson, Mississippi, but he hadn’t realized how his hunger and the search for food was going to slow him down. New Orleans had been a nightmare, but it hadn’t been this difficult to find food there.
As he walked out of yet another emptied fast food joint, Dax kicked a trashcan over in frustration. He heard a few squeaks, and that was when he looked over and saw a squirrel skipping across the parking lot and shimmying up a nearby tree.
Damn you, Calvin.
The brilliance of the old man began to settle in. How had he caught a squirrel? And even with a knife, how was Dax going to kill it? Throw the blade at the rodent? Chase the squirrel up a tree and bash its head in? After playing through several scenarios in his head, Dax decided that his best chance at killing the squirrel would be throwing his knife at it. It would take some serious aim for a guy who’d never thrown a knife, but he found himself with little choice but to try.
He followed the squirrel to a dilapidated park nearby, where it looked like he’d have plenty of options. Dozens of trees covered the area, and it was fashioned with a few picnic tables and playground equipment that looked like it had been there since the ‘80s. He wondered if the place had been unused even before the Blackout. But that didn’t matter now—his stomach reminded him of what did.
Dax went to one knee and retrieved the knife from the bag, stepped over the fence, and walked into the park.
The shade of the trees provided a brief respite from the blazing sun, leaving him with only the humidity to deal with for the time being. He walked with a soft heel-to-toe movement as he made his way toward the middle of the park. He heard the squirrels above him in the trees, but he also heard other small animals on the ground, likely hiding in the bushes. He had to be patient and wait for one to emerge, and then he could strike.
It didn’t take long.
A rabbit hopped out from behind a bush. It stopped only yards from Dax. He licked his lips. Though he’d never eaten rabbit, he’d at least heard about it being served at fancy restaurants. That was more than he could say for squirrel.
Holding the blade between two fingers of his right hand, Dax cocked his arm like a professional baseball player.
You can do this.
With the snap of his wrist, Dax brought his arm forward and tossed the knife toward the rabbit. It floated over the fluffy ears and Dax’s eyes went wide.
Missed.
The knife had sailed over the rabbit, and the butt end of it hit the dirt, taking one bounce before landing in the grass. The rabbit took off, hopping away and out of sight.
Dax sighed. He stomped over to the knife, picked it up, and threw it as hard as he could toward a nearby tree. The tip stuck into the trunk.
“Fuck you, knife. Now you stick.”
Animals scattered, and he watched three squirrels and another rabbit disappear at a run back into the brush.
He was sulking toward the tree to retrieve the knife when he heard the sound of a speeding vehicle on the highway. He looked up in time to see a black van cruising by and out of sight. Dax ran out of the park and toward the road.
That’s when he heard the crash.
When he got the edge of the road, he saw the van lying on its side in the median.
“Oh, shit.”
Dax was about to race over and check for surviving passengers when he heard more engines roaring on the highway. He glanced to the horizon just in time to see a group of big, chrome, motorcycles coming his way.
Before they saw him, Dax ran back into the park and ducked behind a tree.
The motorcycle gang cruised by, and Dax was careful to stay hidden behind the tree. They drove by him and out of sight, but then he heard them idling near the wreck.
Slowly, and using trees and other objects to keep himself hidden, Dax made his way out to the highway. He saw that the bikers had indeed stopped near the wreck.
The bikers were white, and they all wore Confederate flag patches covering their backs, so Dax instinctively believed he had made the right decision in hiding. He watched as a couple of the men stepped off their bikes and looked into the overturned van. One of the men reached inside, and when he pulled his hands out, they were covered in blood.
But then, without speaking, they returned to their bikes. The gang revved up their bikes and took off, leaving the wreckage behind.
Dax waited for the dust to settle on the Mississippi highway before he jogged out and stood in the middle of the road, looking in the direction the motorcycles had gone. The bikers had disappeared over another hill, leaving Dax alone with the wreck. Unsure of what he would find, he slowly walked to the van.
It remained on its side in the median with smoke billowing from beneath the hood. Glass sparkled in the early evening sun like a bag of spilled diamonds. Dax approached the broken window and looked inside.
Dax saw a man folded up like an accordion. He hadn’t been wearing his seat belt when the van had crashed, and the impact had killed him. Dax looked away, his appetite suddenly lost.
And that’s when he saw what had caused the accident.
Lying in the middle of the road was a deer—blood still oozing from its stomach. The back half of its body had been mangled, most likely doing as much damage to the van as it had done to the animal.
Despite the grizzly scene, Dax couldn’t quite understand why the biker gang hadn’t taken the deer. Furthermore, why hadn’t they searched the entire van, possibly leaving behind essential supplies or weapons?
His hunger had returned, though, and he could only focus on
one thing.
“If only I knew how to field dress a deer and cook venison.”
He figured he’d start with a knife and a campfire, hoping that, unlike squirrel, deer tasted like chicken.
10
Jing exploded into The Republic, nearly tearing the hinges off of the doors. It wasn’t the place where the factions had decided to meet, but it was where he expected to get some answers.
He hadn’t heard from Seyana in days. And because he was so strongly connected to his lieutenant and oldest ally, Jing knew something had to have gone wrong. His instinct had brought him to this place, which had once been a music venue on the southwestern corner of the French Quarter. Now, as he looked around the auditorium, he saw that vampires filled the seats.
“Where is she?”
The Screamers stared at the leader of the Asian faction aimlessly, as though they didn’t have the ability to speak. He surmised that they had recently been turned, making for soldiers without the advanced capability of speech.
Jing stormed through the room, looking for a leader—a more mature Screamer who could give him answers. The others let him pass, snarling as he moved through the room, apparently smart enough to sense Jing’s strength and understand that he was one of the most powerful vampires on the planet.
He ended up in a hallway with several doors. Screamers guarded the rooms, and like the ones in the auditorium, they simply stared at him. He opened the doors one by one, looking for any sign of Seyana.
To his left, another hallway ended at a door. Two vampires stood before it. Jing marched toward the door, waving at the guards with his right hand.
“Out of my way.”
They didn’t move.
Jing raised up onto his toes and put his chin in one’s face. “Stand down, or your Master is not going to be happy about what I do to you.”
The creature snarled, but it moved, as did its counterpart.
Jing reached for the door handle, pushed it, and stepped inside.
Candles illuminated the room. Two overturned cages sat against the wall, one of which had been mangled. But none of that concerned Jing. His attention was drawn to the center of the room where two metal poles had been driven into the floor, each topped with a severed head.
On the pole to the right, the eyes of a man with long blonde hair stared blankly at the wall—his slate-blue eyes glassy and his face showing European descent. On the other spike sat a head Jing had seen many times before.
He approached it and ran his hand through Seyana’s black hair. Unlike those of the blonde man on the other spike, Seyana’s eyes had been closed, but her purple tongue lolled out from between blue lips. Jing brushed the hair from her face, feeling her cold skin on his fingertips. She bore the chill of true death—no longer Jing’s creation, but a human corpse.
Pulling his hand away as if he’d been burned, Jing balled his fist. For a Master to kill a such a high-ranking member of another faction would normally result in all-out warfare. His cracked his knuckles and stomped out of the room.
The two guards he’d passed on his way in stood against the wall. Jing growled while pointing at them, the gesture paralyzing them both. With a sudden twist of his left arm, he drove his fist into one Screamer’s chest, his knuckles exploding through the vampire’s back. He clutched the vampire’s heart in his hand and pulverized it, allowing the creature’s body to fall. Jing withdrew his fist as the body hit the floor, and with his right hand, he grabbed the other guard’s head, turning it violently until he heard the spine snap.
Screamers ran down the hallway toward the Master of the Asian faction, but he used his bare hands to kill each one. By the time he’d arrived at the front of the building, he’d slain eleven Screamers.
The creatures sitting in the auditorium snarled as he walked through, but they could do nothing as Jing paralyzed every Screamer in the room. He wanted to destroy them all, but there was no time.
Ryo, who had temporarily taken Seyana’s place at Jing’s side, waited for him at the door. He bowed as Jing approached.
“Did you find what you were looking for, Master?”
“Get my suit, Ryo,” Jing commanded, ignoring the lieutenant’s question. “It’s time for me to meet with the Masters of the factions.”
Ryo bowed again. “Yes, Master.” The vampire turned to leave the club.
“And Ryo?”
“Yes, Master?” Ryo said, turning around.
“Your role is permanent now. I hope that you will not let me down.”
Ryo bowed. “Of course not. Thank you, Master.” He turned again and hopped over the railing.
Jing turned back to face The Republic, staring at the paralyzed Screamers who stared at him from inside the theater.
“It’s all going to burn.”
11
Searching the van, Dax hadn’t found anything of use. He had emptied a backpack full of clothes that wouldn’t fit him and transferred his things into it, but nothing more. The backpack had two straps, whereas the duffle bag had banged against his right hip with every step, leaving a mottled bruise.
This accomplished, he’d turned to do the dirty work he had been avoiding. Even in the apocalypse, you had to do shit you didn’t feel like doing. Dax flipped the deer over and ran his knife just beneath its skin to avoid puncturing the bladder and ruining the meat. He reached in with bare hands then and pulled the deer’s innards out, leaving them in a steaming heap on the side of the road—something the old timers would’ve called a “gut pile.” Dax didn’t have time to skin the animal or butcher it properly, the way he was taught as a young deer hunter. And even if he had, he’d have no way of keeping it from spoiling. As a result, all of this bloody work would mean a meal or two at most, but Dax hadn’t found much else, and his stomach reminded him of it.
Dax cut two flanks and wrapped them in a plastic bag before using an old shirt from the duffel bag he’d found to wipe the blood from his hands.
The meat would spoil soon so Dax slipped both his arms through the straps and he continued down the highway on foot as the late afternoon slid toward dusk, hoping to find a place to cook the venison.
With it being almost dark, he’d decided to stop at a gas station. He didn’t want to stray too far from the road, and there weren’t many other buildings around on this desolate stretch of rural Mississippi highway.
Toppled shelving units that had once been filled with peanuts, chips, and other junk food lay in the middle of the room. Wooden pallets sat stacked against the far wall, three-high and still filled with windshield washer fluid—apparently not a vital commodity these days. Dax tossed gallons of blue liquid to the side before pulling the slats from the pallets. He carried bundles of wood around to the back of the building when he was done, needing three trips to create a big enough pile for a cooking fire.
He’d also found a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Dax hadn’t smoked in years, but the familiar scent of tobacco had brought back a surge of memories. He’d grabbed the cigarettes, thinking he might want a smoke later. And for a moment, he considered lighting up now. His stomach grumbled, though, and so Dax tossed the cigarettes to the ground after shoving the lighter into his pocket.
Dax had seen a stack of newspapers near the front door, too. They’d remained bundled with a yellow plastic bind while loose magazines and maps had been blown about the place. He grabbed a stack of fifty and walked to the back of the gas station. He pulled the lighter out of his pocket, ripped a newspaper from the stack, and looked at the front-page headline of The Clarion Ledger.
“Cyberterrorists Strike! President Suspects China.”
Dax shook his head, but he started reading the article before deciding that it didn’t matter. He crumpled the front page into a ball, tucked it beneath the stack of wood, and lit the edge with the lighter.
The flames spread quickly, leaping over the wooden slats as he fed more crumpled balls of newspaper into the space he’d created at the bottom of the fire. Convinced that the wood had caug
ht and that he wouldn’t need to find anymore kindling, Dax headed back around to the front of the gas station to get his backpack and his two venison steaks. Near the front door, he stopped at a t-shirt rack that had been knocked over. He bent down and searched through them, coming across a purple LSU shirt in his size.
“Damn straight.”
He took off his other shirt, which was covered in deer blood, and pulled the Tigers tee over his head. Dax smiled upon feeling the smooth, clean cotton on his skin. For a moment, he considered whether it would be the last time he’d ever have this experience. It didn’t look like retail was going to make a comeback anytime soon.
A dead tree hung over the ice machine on the side of the building. Dax looked inside, not really expecting to find anything. Instead, he turned his eyes up and snapped a branch off. The sheared end appeared to be sharp enough to push through the meat he had at hand.
He took one of the deer steaks out of his backpack and pushed the makeshift skewer through it, holding it over the fire. A plastic bucket lay against a nearby wall, and Dax turned it over and sat on it as he cooked his venison. The meat took longer to cook than he’d expected—cooking over an open fire wasn’t nearly as fast as a propane grill, but the sun had dropped below the horizon. He closed his eyes, listening to the steak sizzle. The aroma of grilled meat made his stomach rumble even louder.
Yet again, he was alone—not something he was used to. Even in prison, he’d had a cellmate. And since escaping after the Blackout, he’d only been alone for a short time before running into Chloe. He’d been in the company of others after that. But other than the brief encounter with Calvin, he’d been alone since Chuck had died.
There’d been a time when he would have loved to be alone. Even though he’d often run with gangs, Dax had always considered himself a lone wolf. But now, with everything he had been through, being alone left him too much time to think about all the things that had happened—those who had died, especially, most of whom he felt had been his responsibility. Monica, Kevin, Darius, and Gabby’s kids—Anthony, Kim, and Kanesha—had been put in the middle of this mess because of Dax.
